


each new arrival

by Elizabeth (anghraine)



Category: The Borgias (2011)
Genre: Backstory, Canon Compliant, F/M, Family Dynamics, Gen, Headcanon, Mother-Son Relationship, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-24 22:35:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3786853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anghraine/pseuds/Elizabeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Vanozza has no one of her own blood—no one at all—hasn’t since the day Juana de Castañeda sailed from Castilla with her first protector.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cesare

**Author's Note:**

> This is compliant with _The Borgias_ , not history--I draw some ideas from there and all the people mentioned are real people, but with lots of rearranging and laughing at dates and general liberties. It's the backstory I dreamed up to make sense of the handful of details we get in the show, and along the way got worked into [_we get dark, only to shine_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1185961/chapters/2419738).

Pope Calixtus, kindly as an uncle, makes for a stern and pious patron. Should he discover Vanozza, his favour might dry up in an instant, and all their hopes with it. Rodrigo knows this; Vanozza knows this.

(She knows most of his thoughts; they have few secrets. He cannot marry, but by now they are as much husband and wife as lovers.)

So they hide their—arrangement? Understanding. Vanozza lives in a villa outside of Rome, comfortable for her, peaceful for him, both their reputations secure. They keep themselves discreet, more than either have attempted before. He is forty, she well into her twenties, neither of them such wayward children as to demand that the world shape itself around their love.

Rodrigo visits as often as he can—not as much as they would like, but enough to settle into something like domesticity, carefully tucked away. In her own time, Vanozza manages her household and servants, buys the little luxuries that she once considered a waste, invests her money in a few inns. There’s an odd pleasure in that, overseeing an enterprise without a fear of disaster. If she fails, what does it matter?—Yet she does not fail. She has good instincts for this sort of thing, quick judgment of character and ability, perceiving in an instant what must be rewarded and what discarded. She soon sees a return on her money, and then much more. She is safe and wealthy and happy, secure in the life she wants, has always wanted. There is nothing to catch the Pope’s eye.

Nothing, until Vanozza tells Rodrigo: she has conceived.

He is not the first man to share Vanozza’s bed, but the child he plants in her belly is her firstborn. Rodrigo’s firstborn, too—somehow—but it matters less to him. He has young cousins, and nieces and nephews too. To his brother’s children he acts more as a father than Pedro Luis himself; the eldest remains tucked away in Valencia, but Rodrigo takes care to write avuncular letters nearly as affectionate as the hugs and jewels he bestows on the little girls. Vanozza has no one of her own blood—no one at all—hasn’t since the day Juana de Castañeda sailed from Castilla with her first protector.

There are ways to end a pregnancy. But Vanozza does not consider that. She wants this child; she dreads a miscarriage, a stillbirth, the fevers that sweep through Rome each summer. There are so many ways for death to strike infant or mother. For a time, she fears too that even if they both live, Rodrigo will hide the child away in some peasant village as his nephew was hidden.

To his credit, Rodrigo looks appalled at the very thought.

“He is a Borgia,” he says firmly. “Our son.”

“Or daughter,” says Vanozza.

Rodrigo, far from dismayed, smiles at the prospect. But he prefers females of any age—his women to his colleagues, his nieces to his nephews, his sisters to his brother. Vanozza to anyone. He would like a girl to spoil. And great men need wives.

“Or our daughter.”

The child will be Spanish, Castilian and Valencian: but Roman, too. That must not be forgotten. Rodrigo, past the first shock, thinks already of the future. A daughter will be Octavia or Lucretia. A boy—Caesar.

The baby comes screaming into the world on schedule, a healthy boy. Vanozza’s son, their firstborn son. Rodrigo isn’t there, busy with the Pope’s business, but she dutifully calls him Cesare. Cèsar, to the aunts and uncles and cousins around her, for he is not born in Rome.

Soon after she discovered her pregnancy, Pope Calixtus sent Rodrigo on an urgent diplomatic mission to Aragón. Even Vanozza had little idea of the details, but Rodrigo seized the opportunity: he ordered a separate passage for Vanozza on the same ship, pretended to be a stranger—she could hardly keep from laughing, despite the seasickness—and sent her to his family before heading on to the royal court.

She feared they might dislike her, condemn her as a whore and her child as a bastard: but this is not Rome. They received her with the utmost respect as a favoured son’s consort, and treated her kindly according to their natures. Rodrigo’s aunt Caterina fussed until the birth; her own children followed the family fortunes to Rome long ago.

“I never thought to see Roderic’s child,” she told Vanozza tearfully. Joana, one of Rodrigo’s sisters, laughed and extricated her.

She said, “We Joanas must stand together.” 

In fact, they never call her Joana. Just Juana. She hadn’t realized she missed it.

So if Rodrigo is not there, shut up with ambassadors in Barcelona, he has ensured that she has others about her: Caterina patting her hair and crying over the baby, Joana praising her fortitude, the childless sisters laughing when Cesare’s tiny hands close over Beatriu’s finger. Joana’s grown children, Jofrè and Isabel-Lucrècia, congratulate her on a fine strong son, and Jofrè’s wife—another Joana—strokes a gentle finger over Cesare’s cheek. 

“He is a lovely baby,” says Isabel-Lucrècia, herself increasing.

Even Jofrè’s little boys peer, fascinated, into the cradle.

“He has hair,” Joan points out. “Anna didn’t have hair.”

Cesare does have hair, fine black tufts over his head. Neither Rodrigo nor Vanozza have black hair—surely they will not think—but they do  _not_ think it. Tecla, wafting so much jasmine that Vanozza nearly sneezes, says that he reminds her of Beatriu when she was first born. She had black hair at first, too, and that way of blinking all around, and curling her hands into fists as she slept. Vanozza looks at Beatriu, relieved; she resembles Rodrigo the most of his sisters, and the glossy brown of her hair is exactly the same.

Vanozza is relieved, too, that Cesare manifestly prefers her to all the others, the wet-nurse and doting aunts and curious cousins. He wails when she leaves, quiets at the sound of her voice when he quiets at all, sleeps most readily in her arms. He does not much like kisses, but when Vanozza sings to him, he stares wide-eyed at her face and relaxes. Her heart beats with a fierce, painful joy; she has loved before, but never as she does this perfect son of hers, this Borgia child she brought into the world. For now he is hers, her very own.

Rodrigo, daring not to jeopardize the negotiations, leaves Barcelona over a month after Cesare’s birth. But he covers the two hundred miles to Valencia in five days, and finds her in Tecla’s gardens amidst the smell of jasmine and lavender, their child in her arms.

He kisses her and gazes down at the sleeping child. In shape and number, everything appears as it ought to be. He looks very much like any other Borja at that age, as Rodrigo supposes he must have, himself. Only then does the knowledge really settle in him, sharpen to reality: his son. He has a  _son_.

“You are both well, my love?” he asks, voice hushed.

“Yes, yes.” She smiles down at the baby. “I have recovered and he is perfect.” The smile turns to a rueful grin. “I must warn you, his voice could cut through steel. You will hear.”

“Let me—”

She nods, and carefully settles Cesare into his arms. Rodrigo can feel the warmth and weight of their child’s living body, see him breathe. He stares into the small sleeping face.

“I can do the most for him in the Church,” he says, thinking it through. “And the firstborn should follow his father, should he not?”

Vanozza laughs under her breath. “Save your schemes until he can speak.”

The baby stirs, making one of his incomprehensible infant sounds as he wakes—grumbling, Vanozza suspects. Then Cesare, who dislikes any change in the routines that govern his life, opens his eyes to a stranger’s face. He screams.

Rodrigo just chuckles and returns him to Vanozza. She murmurs in a soothing voice, Castilian, until Cesare’s cries subside to a low wail, then sends for the wet-nurse.

“I understand what you meant about his voice,” says Rodrigo, still in a good humour; his nephews and nieces did the same, at first. If he does not blame himself for his absence, mandated as it was by Pope and king, he will not blame a baby, either. He rubs his ears. “He should make a powerful orator someday, at any rate.”

Vanozza shakes her head.

They spend another fortnight in Valencia, chiefly in Xàtiva and Gandia. Rodrigo, second only to the Pope in family pride, is received warmly by his sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins in various degrees of remoteness. He argues with Tecla about poetry, laughs at the few silver strands in Beatriu’s brown hair, admires Joana’s grandchildren and wishes joy and long life to Isabel-Lucrècia. He even plays with the boys. Roderic, his namesake, is all but swept off his feet, six-year-old Joan delighted. And he leaves for a few hours to see a nearer young relation, his brother’s son Bernardo—a boy of ten all but discarded by his father until the births of two more children made secrecy impossible, and then merely disregarded. Vanozza cannot bring herself to leave Cesare for so long, but her heart goes out to the boy. That might have been Cesare’s lot, had Rodrigo been other than he is.

On his return, Rodrigo joins Vanozza, arms about her waist as she rocks the cradle.

“Cesare will have my name,” he says softly, “as will any others after him. He will know me as his father. And he will have all that I can grant him.”

She has only just sung the baby to sleep; she dares not cry. Instead she smiles, and turns her head to kiss him.

“Your nephew, is he—?”

Rodrigo sighs. “My nephew is a Borgia, as much as Roderic or Joan or—Cesare. I would have him properly brought within the family.”

“Shall you take him to Rome?”

“No,” says Rodrigo, after a long pause; he must have considered it. “Bernardo is clever, but straightforward, reckless. Rome would not suit him. And at this age, in his circumstances, it would be more cruelty than kindness.”

“I see that.” Vanozza tries not to think of what Rome may be for her son. “Yet one of you must take charge of him.”

He sighs again. “I shall speak to Tecla.”

She feels a faint stirring of surprise; amongst his sisters, Joana is his clear favourite, and clever Beatriu near to his heart. Of course he loves Tecla as well; he loves anyone who shares a drop of his blood, much less all of it. But Tecla, though kind, can be tedious, and her understanding does not surpass the ordinary. She  _is_ the eldest of them all; perhaps that weighs with him.

Whatever the reason, he spends several hours shut up with her. Vanozza, leaving Cesare to the sharp eyes of his nurse, walks outside to enjoy the pleasant Valencian sunshine; May has come and gone, taking the last remnants of a cool spring with it. After a few minutes, she happens across Isabel-Lucrècia and Joana de Montcada; the sisters-in-law cheerfully accompany her.

“You know, I hope, that the Pope will not hear of any of this,” Joana tells her. “Cardinal Borja explained it all.”

“I thank you,” replies Vanozza, her smile warmer than her words.

Isabel-Lucrècia squeezes her arm. “We think of you as one of our own, Juana, and of course Cèsar—we always protect our own. And we would hate to add to his Holiness’ cares, would we not?”

They all laugh; and they weep when they part, not long afterwards. The Vice-Chancellor cannot remain in his homeland without cause, unless that homeland is Rome. So Rodrigo and Vanozza take leave of his family, then separate to make their way to the port—Rodrigo accumulates his entourage towards Algemesí, while Vanozza, Cesare, her servants, and some guards travel straight to Valencia.

On the ship, by necessity, Rodrigo scarcely acknowledges Vanozza’s or Cesare’s existence. As Vanozza dislikes the sea and chiefly remains within her own quarters, there is little difficulty in this. Cesare, however,  _does_ like the sea, despite his general fretfulness, so now and then she forces herself to walk on the deck with him, focusing on his smile and waving hands rather than the bottomless, endless waters all about them. One time Rodrigo nods politely at her; another, he speaks to her in the friendly way he does everyone.

“Your son, I apprehend?—a handsome boy,” he says, nodding at Cesare. “What is he called?”

“Cesare, your Eminence.” She will rip her liver out before she calls him  _Cesare dei Cattanei_ , secrecy be damned.

“A fine name.”

And that is that. For once, she counts herself fortunate that his duties kept him away during the birth and in the weeks afterwards; Cesare, if he recognized Rodrigo, would instantly betray them. But he does not yet know his father.

She is grateful to set foot on land, though Rodrigo has already left for the Vatican. She knew he would; they arranged it all weeks ago. And she feels more grateful still to set foot in her own villa, received by her own servants, her son in her arms.

They have returned to Rome; and Cesare is Cesare in truth.


	2. Juan

Rodrigo hopes that, after all he accomplished in Barcelona, the Pope will see fit to spare him time for private interests. He is too astute a statesman to do more than hope; though Fernando of Aragón acknowledged his cousin’s claim to Naples, he did so grudgingly, and cannot be trusted at the best of times. He will certainly do no more than acknowledge it. With good reason, Rodrigo suspects that his uncle’s need of him will only intensify in the following months.

His suspicions prove accurate. Between France rattling its swords, Spain’s tepid loyalty, Ferrante’s utterly depraved character and his grim determination to sit in Alfonso the Magnificent’s throne at last, Rodrigo scarcely leaves the Pope’s side. He can do no more than snatch a few stolen moments at the villa over the next few months.

Vanozza receives him affectionately, and her—their—home remains his haven from the demands of the Vatican. His son is another matter. Before Rodrigo can turn around, it seems, Cesare has already changed from the child he held in his arms. His blue eyes have turned as brown as Vanozza’s and Rodrigo’s own; golden-brown ringlets cover his head; he holds his head upright, grasps bright ribbons in his hands, returns Vanozza’s smiles. But he does not smile at Rodrigo, whose erratic visits make little impression on his infant memory. Indeed, for three months he still cries whenever he finds Rodrigo holding him. Another papal errand, this time to Naples itself, does no favours; Cesare is over six months old before he recognizes Rodrigo on sight.

He wriggles away from kisses and howls when squeezed, but permits himself to be held, babbling gravely at his father. Rodrigo laughs and says, “A born priest, eh?”

Vanozza smiles indulgently. Her world, even less than Rodrigo’s, does not order itself according to her wishes. And she sees vastly more of their son than Rodrigo; already, Cesare has shown himself wholly his own—tiny—person, quiet so much of the time that even the nurse marvels, then intractable the rest, laughing or screaming as suits his mood. What he may be as a man, she presumes not to guess, except for one certainty: he will know his own mind.

Of course, Rodrigo may understand children better than she does, with his four brothers and sisters, and all those nephews and nieces and young cousins. Juana de Castañeda was the only child of a reclusive painter. He certainly must have greater experience of children—but she has greater experience of this child, even after the papal investiture of Naples returns their lives to something like the ordinary. If she cannot imagine what Cesare will be at twenty, she understands his moods and whims, the best times to lift him into the air or hold him on his legs, when to leave him to crawl and amuse himself while Nurse watches, the difference between one cry and another.

He still does not cry much, by Nurse’s judgment, and Rodrigo agrees when she mentions it to him.

“Beatriu never stopped howling,” he says, with evident affection, “and half the time one might have thought Isabel and Jeronima were being killed. Cesare is better-behaved than any of us.” He kisses her. “That must come from you, my love.”

She still frets a little. Perhaps it is a natural difference; a father’s worries come later, a father’s anxious love. Rodrigo is kindly and affectionate enough towards Cesare, satisfied with his infant progress. Vanozza, who bore him, who spends some part of every day with him and watches for each incremental change, cannot be so sanguine. If she has done something wrong, failed Rodrigo, failed Cesare, she—she does not know. Yet when she looks at her son, with his curls and his face like a solemn cherub, dangles a small fortune in jewels before his fascinated eyes, hides her face behind her hands and hears him laugh, she cannot think him less than perfect.

“Lonely, I expect,” Nurse says sagely.

Vanozza’s mind fixes on that point. Cesare never sees other children; he sees no one but Vanozza and Rodrigo and the servants, each of his days very much like the others. His cousins are either grown or much older than he is. And she has felt no signs of another child, despite the wet-nurse and Rodrigo’s undiminished passion—her own as well.

It may be for the best. If she continues to conceive, before long there will be no hiding this life of theirs. Still, the idea only settles more firmly into her mind. Another child.

She says nothing of this to Rodrigo; in fact, he raises the subject unprompted.

“I am thinking of bringing my nieces here, now and then,” he says one day. “Cesare should know his cousins.”

“He should,” agrees Vanozza cautiously, “but what of the Pope?”

Rodrigo scowls. “I can manage my uncle. I must, sooner or later. If any others come—”

By instinct, they both glance down at her womb. She was enormous and ungainly a mere eleven months ago; now, Vanozza—slender by nature—has long since recovered her figure. She lays a hand over her belly, nearly as flat beneath her skirts as before she carried Cesare.

“Cesare would like a brother or sister,” Rodrigo says, in his most Rodrigo way. It must be; he has declared it to be so. “I believe it might do him good.”

This is as near as he will come to asking if she has tried to avoid another pregnancy.

“So do I,” says Vanozza, “but that lies in the hands of God.”

He smiles. Rodrigo never doubts the Lord’s favour.

A week or two later, Vanozza returns to the villa after hours in the city. Immediately making her way to the nursery, she swings a happy Cesare up into the air.

“Ma,” he says, and looks straight at her. “Ma, ma, ma.”

She catches her breath.

“Yes, my love,” says Vanozza, delighted. She presses a careful kiss against his cheek, which Cesare graciously tolerates. “Mama.”

In the space of a few weeks, he begins to form other words, in whole or part: _gat_ for a mouser he particularly likes, and _no_ and _sí_ and, to Vanozza’s vast relief, _papá_. Rodrigo laughs when he hears that, warm and loud, scoops him up in his arms and kisses him with none of Vanozza’s caution.

“No, Papa,” Cesare says decisively.

Rodrigo just laughs louder.

As if God truly smiles on them, Vanozza does not bleed that month, nor the next. Rodrigo shouts for joy when she tells him; now she is the one he catches in his strong embrace—and, not being a small and nervous child, she holds him tightly and kisses him back.

 _At last_ , she thinks—or he says aloud—she cannot tell.

Vanozza tries to explain to Cesare, who at a year old repeats new words daily, and seems to understand a good deal more than he can say. But “brother” or “sister” means nothing to him. He takes much more interest in toddling towards her, and Rodrigo when he visits them.

“Walking already!” says Rodrigo, meaning to be jovial, but with an unmistakable note of melancholy.

Vanozza smooths his hair. “Children grow quickly.”

He did not hold his firstborn at birth; he did not hear his first words, see his first teeth or his first steps. Cesare still flinches from him at times, and the fact that he flinches from anyone who surprises him or makes a sudden noise provides little consolation. It will be different, for this child. Everything will be different.

“I have sinned,” he says in the confession box, fear and determination hammering a quick beat in his chest. And when the Pope, his uncle, unknowingly asks him what sin he has committed, Rodrigo speaks with a tongue that feels thick and unwieldy for the first time in his life. “Fornication.”

Uncomfortable silence settles in the confessional. Then Calixtus sighs.

“Another indiscretion, nephew?”

“Yes—no.” Rodrigo tries to gather his thoughts. “A discretion, rather.”

“How many?”

He blinks. “How many times?”

How could he begin to count?

“How many women?” says Calixtus, voice suggesting that Rodrigo is a slow-witted child.

“One,” he says. “One of significance.”

That says all that needs to be said, and he feels no need for more. It was his uncle, after all, who sent him away from Vanozza and Cesare for those long and tedious negotiations, within a few short weeks of his return from Barcelona. Neither Calixtus nor Vanozza require details of how he amused himself. No one can occupy her place.

This silence falls even heavier than the last.

“You have a mistress.”

“Yes, your Holiness,” says Rodrigo, resolve firm, “the mother of my son.”

When Calixtus speaks, his tone is dangerously even. “Has this son of yours a name?”

Rodrigo does not waver for an instant. “Cesare Borgia.”

“Borgia,” the Pope repeats. “You have acknowledged him?”

“I will.”

Through the grate, neither can quite make out the other’s expression. Calixtus, with another long-suffering sigh, turns to stare ahead.

“And I will acknowledge the child she carries now, and any others who follow,” says Rodrigo.

The Pope gives a dry, humourless chuckle. “No peasant bastards for you, eh?”

“Absolutely not,” Rodrigo snaps out. Bernardo’s sullen face, Borgia in every line, is clear in his mind.

Fear runs hot and vibrant in him. In general, he and his uncle understand each other well; as Vice-Chancellor, Rodrigo often guesses the Pope’s thoughts without a word. Yet in this moment he cannot foresee what awaits him when he leaves the confession box. A man must take risks, for himself and his family; he can only hope that a confession freely given proves safer than the inevitable discovery would be.

Calixtus turns his face towards Rodrigo. “You will not flaunt this woman.”

“No, Holy Father,” says Rodrigo, humbly. He dares not show the vast relief he feels; in any other company, he would slump backwards.

“And bring us to her residence.”

Nothing could have prepared him for this. “I beg your pardon?”

“Your son is a Borgia, did you not say? We would see our great-nephew.” While Rodrigo sits in stunned disbelief, Calixtus adds, “The mother is Roman, I suppose?”

“No,” Rodrigo says, feeling himself on firmer ground. “She comes from Toledo.”

“Spanish? Hm!” Calixtus gives a sharp nod of his head. “Good, your children will be Spanish through and through. You shall devise a way to convey us, to convey us in secret, to this Castilian lady and her son—you understand? Plainly discretion lies within your talents.” Faint approval colours his tone.

“I did not wish to offend your Holiness.”

“The wish alone places you in advance of your brother cardinals,” says Calixtus dryly. “Very well. We would advise abstinence, but plainly that would be without purpose. Devote a hundred ducats to a worthy cause, something of that sort. And say a dozen Hail Marys every night while you contemplate your sins.”

Rodrigo straightens up. “Yes, Holy Father.”

“ _Ego te absolvo …_ ”

As always, God’s favour lies on him.

That certainty only deepens when he leads his uncle, both of them masked and hooded, to the villa. Vanozza is at her most gracious, everything about her speaking of subdued elegance; the Pope treats her like the old gentleman he is; and Cesare, who looks particularly angelic, remains tranquil with both Vanozza and Rodrigo nearby.

“Does he speak yet?” Calixtus asks them.

“Yes,” says Cesare. He blinks owlishly at the Pope, who laughs outright.

“A clever boy.” Calixtus glances sidewise at Rodrigo. “Like his father.”

Later, after Vanozza withdraws with Cesare asleep in her arms, Calixtus leans back in his chair and studies his nephew.

“If you are to have acknowledged sons, Roderic, you must think of the future. I will not live forever—nor, I fear, very much longer.” He waves off Rodrigo’s immediate denial. “Pah. I am not on my deathbed yet, but age creeps on me. As it does us all. Let us think of reality, not wishes. Rome has been dangerous enough in my life, but it will be far more so after I die. Pere Lluís, the girls, Adriana, now Cesare and any others—they will be vulnerable the instant these Italians question my survival. And you must retain your position, at whatever cost. Your ability should make that inevitable, but …”

“Rome will be Rome,” says Rodrigo.

“Indeed.” Calixtus steeples his fingers. “As Vice-Chancellor, you will not only remain secure in yourself, but able to provide a future for your sons. Armies for Cesare, bishoprics for this next, or a dowry.”

“I understand, Holy Father,” he replies.

“You must think of their educations as well. Masters, tutors. They will not only be bastards but Spanish bastards. You have not chosen an easy path for them. And particularly for the other child, there is instruction in faith and law to consider.”

Rodrigo almost corrects him on that point, explains that Cesare is to be the priest and this son the soldier, but inspiration strikes.

“Indeed there is,” he tells his uncle. “I would have him guided by one of unquestionable virtue, knowledge, and faith.”

Calixtus nods approvingly.

“Therefore I beg you, Holy Father, to stand as sponsor to this child.”

“I?” The Pope’s hands drop to his lap, his usually inscrutable face startled.

“I can think of none better,” Rodrigo says, “uncle.”

Calixtus frowns at the carpet for a full minute. Then he says, “I will consider it.”

Rodrigo inclines his head.

Later, Vanozza says, “Do you think he will accept?”

“Yes,” Rodrigo replies, “but even if he does not, it pleased him to be asked.” He lays a hand over her belly, which has only begun to swell. “We made compromises enough with Cesare. I will do all in my power for this one.”

She smiles. “I do not doubt you, my love. And I look forward to the day that he, or she, has a name other than This One!”

“Juan,” says Rodrigo. He would have been just as pleased with Cesare, had he been a daughter—more pleased, perhaps—but this child, this child must be a son. He does not doubt that it will be so.

“For Joana?”

“Yes,” he says, stroking her curls out of her face, “and for you.”

The steady beat of her heart burns under her ribs. Juana, Juan: her language and her name. She has never expected that, for any child she might bear him.

“Juan,” says Vanozza softly.

After an easy pregnancy, her labour begins on a searingly hot day. Remembering how long it took Cesare to arrive, Vanozza only informs him several hours after her water breaks, and it takes him another hour to extricate himself from the Vatican and make his way to the villa. He expects to wait several hours more before he sees his son: but several hours later, though he can hear Vanozza’s screams, the child has yet to arrive. He sends for the maid who accompanied her to Valencia and demands to know how long she suffered with Cesare.

“Ten hours, your Eminence,” she says, and flinches at another scream. “It usually takes less time after the first.”

Taken altogether, it has been nine hours already. He resigns himself to waiting, perhaps two or three more—sits down—drifts off. The footsteps of the physician wake him around dawn.

Rodrigo, so accustomed to reading faces, instantly perceives the man’s grim expression.

“The child? Vanozza?” he demands.

“She labours still, Eminence.” The exhausted physician rejoins the midwives in the birthing-room, servants hurrying in and out with water and cloths.

Hours more pass, his robes stick to him, and in a quiet moment, he sends for one of the midwives.

“Will she live?”

With a frightened look, she opens her mouth.

“Speak frankly. You will not be punished for the truth.”

“I know not, your Eminence,” says the midwife. “She has lost so much blood already—”

“Already!” he cries. “It has been a full day.”

“The child is not yet ready,” she says firmly. “The details would bore your Eminence, but I can assure you that it will be at least two or three hours more.”

It is far more than that. Vanozza, clinging to life, struggles for nearly another day. But late that night, returning after a change of clothes, Rodrigo hears a baby scream. He drops his rosary and rushes to the room.

“Vanozza? Vanozza!”

The sharp tang of blood lies heavy on the air; one of the women holds the screaming baby. Several more attend on Vanozza, who lies nearly immobile in her bed. Rodrigo takes the baby in his arms, and walks over to her side.

Vanozza is not flushed with her long work, but dead white, despite the glistening sweat all over her face. Her hair is less damp than wet, her eyes closed. She breathes, hoarse and loud, through a parted mouth.

“Vanozza,” he whispers, “look. Open your eyes.”

It takes her a moment, and he awkwardly arranges himself so that she can see the child. He shrieks again; he’s strong already.

“You have given me a son, my love.”

Her mouth curves slightly—just a little, but something.

She whispers, “Juan.”


End file.
